


Witching Hour

by StopTalkingAtMe



Category: Original Work
Genre: Body Horror, Cannibalism, Dubiously Consensual Sex, Eating Raw Meat, F/M, Ghosts, Gore, Haunted Houses, Implied additional ships, Incest, Manipulation, Pregnancy, Pregnant Sex, References to the hunting of animals, Scenes of maiming, Sex in Captivity, Smut, black magic, gothic horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-25 22:19:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20731592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StopTalkingAtMe/pseuds/StopTalkingAtMe
Summary: Eliza would have died if it wasn't for him, and even if she isn't quite alive, she owes him everything. There are times, though, when it seems like she has forgotten. Edward cannot let that happen.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [foxjar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxjar/gifts).

She would have died.

So Edward told himself in the moments when his qualms began to prick at him more insistently than usual, almost always in the darkest hours of the night when he found himself unable to sleep, lying awake in the master bedroom of his uncle’s house. _His_ house now, of course, although he never could quite convince himself of that.

That master bedroom ought to have been the finest chamber in the house, panelled in walnut, and dominated by a four-poster bed with heavy curtains of scarlet and black brocade, but with the curtains drawn, it was rather like sleeping in a chambered heart, especially when there was a fire burning in the grate and the light came seeping through the brocade, stained blood-red. And still keeping the curtains closed was preferable, because with them open he could see the rest of the room and the corner near the door where the shadows seemed to hide some deeper recess where anything might be hiding. So for Edward it was the curtains and enclosure and the pulse of blood around him, and wishing he were not quite so much of a coward.

But then again, a coward would never have been able to bring her back.

The fire would certainly have killed her were it not for him. As it was he’d only been just in time. When he arrived at the hospice, Eliza had been teetering on the brink of death, and it seemed each rasping breath might be her last. Her face had been bandaged, but he could see the terrible damage done by the fire through the dressings. Half of her golden hair had been scorched away, and the rest lay in a loosely plaited rope across her shoulder.

Edward took a seat by the bed. "Has she woken?"

The nun who’d led him to the bed shook her head. "No, sir, and it’s unlikely she ever will. The Lord is merciful."

His lips tightened into a smile. Through the bandages, he could see the red-raw ruin of Eliza’s skin. Merciful was not the word he would have used.

"It’s a miracle she hasn’t already passed over," the nun continued. "But it’ll not be long now, I expect."

"Perhaps she was merely waiting for me," he murmured, stroking Eliza’s rope of hair.

"Perhaps she was. Will you be staying, sir?"

"No." He spoke decisively, as he imagined Magnus might have done, in a tone that brooked no disagreement. "No, I mean to take her home."

"To move her would be to kill her."

"Ah," he said and smiled. He was rather pleased to note that she shrank back a little from that smile. "But she’s dying anyway."

She drew a sharp breath.

"Forgive me," he said, voice rich with amusement. "A little joke. Dark humour, I have found, often provides solace at times of tragedy, wouldn’t you agree?"

"I would not," she said, scandalised.

"My dear cousin Eliza would have agreed," he said. "I can assure you of that. And I can also assure you, sister, that I have everything in place to ensure my cousin’s comfort and ease passing into the next world."

She was wavering.

He let his expression soften into a look of shining grief, and felt something twist in his heart, because he didn’t quite have to fake the grief. "She ought to die in a familiar place. Amongst people who love her."

She sighed and he knew he’d won. Apparently charming nuns came to him a damn sight easier than intimidating them.

"Were you close to your cousin, sir?" she asked.

"We were exceedingly close once," he said. "A long time ago.

* * *

His uncle’s house was an ancient sprawl of red brick and yellowing plaster, with a heavy oak door and leaded glass windows. The tiled roof was stained green with moss and lichen, and a skeleton of dying ivy clung to the brickwork. The building was dominated by a tower that rose out of one of the recently added wings.

It was to the room at the top of this tower that Edward carried Eliza, cradled in his arms like a bride. She was still breathing, and he stripped off her bandages with trembling hands. The ribbon that bound her plait had been dislodged and her hair fell loose across the floorboards. He hesitated before he peeled back the linen to reveal the ruin of her face: the rendered fat and melted skin, a gleam of cheekbone in the wet red flesh. A smell rose off her, the acrid stink of burnt hair and cooked meat.

A miracle, the nun had called it, and by God she’d been right. How Eliza wasn’t dead already he couldn’t tell.

He stared down at her until he heard Magnus’s voice inside his mind, sounding both bored and impatient: _ If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly. _

With scissors he cut through her clothes until she was naked, the body underneath proving as ruined as her face. And then, working fast, he’d chalked the circle about her, marked it with drops of melted scarlet candle wax like splatters of blood, and muttered the necessary invocations, and it had _ worked _. 

He hadn’t really expected it to. In fact, there had been an awful moment when her last breath rattled out, carrying the stench of wet ash and decay, and she didn’t breathe in again. For a long moment, he’d been certain she was gone, that he had failed in this just as he’d failed in almost everything else.

Then she took a breath, and her body began to convulse, heels drumming, head slamming against the floorboards. 

Cursing, Edward dropped to his knees, trying not to scuff the lines of chalk. He held her down, skin crawling at the thought of touching her ruined skin. Her breath came in hard panting breaths, her head whipping from side to side as her spine bent backwards so savagely he was certain it would snap in two. Her cracked lips parted and she keened, the shrill high squeal of a rabbit caught in the jaws of a fox.

Then the convulsions ceased abruptly and she collapsed. Still breathing, and steadier than before.

A heavy tread sounded behind him, and a hand descended on his shoulder so suddenly it made him jump.

_ You did it, my boy_, his dead uncle said.

"Not such a bungling fool after all," he said and grimaced at how his voice shook, but his uncle’s shade had already gone, fading back into the aether. With any luck the bastard hadn’t noticed.

The unconscious woman let out a soft sound in her sleep, and Edward shook himself. Work to do.

To prevent her damaged skin from necrotising, he rubbed it with a carefully prepared liniment. At first he did this reluctantly, squeamish at the texture of her flesh, but gradually he became used to the sensation and the way the liniment prickled the palms of his hands was rather pleasing. He lifted her breasts to slide a slick of ointment along the crease where they met her chest, and found that the skin there was still perfect, pale and white.

With his heartbeat pulsing rapidly in his throat, he worked the liniment over the swell of her breasts and around her nipples. They puckered at his touch, he noted, in what he hoped was a calm detached manner, but which really wasn’t anything of the kind. Another thumb-scoop of ointment, which he circled idly around the nipple, thinking of her as the way she’d been before the fire, back when they’d both been young people free of any obligations but the duty they owed to their families.

She’d been so beautiful then, with hair like spun gold and smile that could turn from joyous to sardonic in an instant and back again. Charming and accomplished and so, so lovely: no wonder she’d managed to win herself such a wealthy husband despite her parents’ straitened circumstances. God knew she’d charmed Edward.

A pity that she’d allowed her fear of Magnus Blake to turn her against the Circle and her own innate magical gifts.

They could have accomplished great things together. Such a damned waste.

* * *

She didn’t wake up. But then, he’d never expected her to. 

Nor did she seem to dream, but a few days after he brought her back, he woke to the sound of what he thought was her screaming for help: _ Help me, Edward. For pity’s sake, have mercy. _

At the top of the attic staircase, he cursed himself when his hands shook as he fumbled with the keys, but when he burst through the door she was still unconscious in the bed in the centre of the room. The shadows cast by the light of the candle looked like fingers clawing at the ruin of her once-beautiful face. The wind howled at the windows, rattling at the glass. That was all it had been: just the wind.

The air stirred around him and warm breath brushed against his ear. _ You always did have an overactive imagination _, Magnus said.

Edward let out a shaky laugh. "I can’t think why."

It was the witching hour, and so Magnus’s shade was faintly visible, an indistinct smear which made Edward’s eyes ache when he looked at it, so instead he lifted the candle and took another step towards the bed. In a certain light he could still see traces of Eliza’s former beauty. Something about how peaceful she appeared when she was sleeping, and he wasn’t entirely sure he liked it. He was still uncertain how much of her still remained, and to what extent he wanted her to remain. Would it be better if her body was merely an empty shell? Easier, perhaps, but then that wasn’t quite the same thing.

"Is she really gone?" he asked.

_ Does it matter? _

"Of course it matters. I don’t want to hurt her."

The spirit drifted to the bed. The quilt twitched, then slid slowly, achingly down, inch by inch, drawn by a hand that had little purchase in the world. Eliza lay dressed in a nightgown, her chest rising and falling in a slow, steady rhythm. The fabric dimpled as a partially visible hand pressed down against her solar plexus and slid upwards between her breasts. It seemed to Edward that there was something unpleasantly lascivious about the way Magnus was caressing her. He opened his mouth to demand the spirit leave her be, but his throat closed up. He ran his tongue around the inside of his dry mouth, but before he could summon up his courage, Magnus spoke.

_ Little remains. Had you performed the ritual more promptly, there might have been more. _

"What exactly was I supposed to do, sir?" Edward demanded. "Perform the ritual in a hospice surrounded by nuns?"

Magnus raised his head, and Edward found himself quailing at the intense stare, cheeks heating in shame. The bastard was supposed to be dead for fuck’s sake.

_Does that prospect frighten you?_ Magnus’s voice was arch.

"I’d rather have avoided it. It would have been awkward, to say the least."

Magnus let out a mocking sigh. Edward frowned, and opened his mouth to protest, but Magnus had already turned his attention back to the woman upon the bed. Her hair moved slightly as incorporeal fingers combed through it. _ You see what my legacy has been reduced to, my dear, _ he murmured. _ All my esoteric knowledge, endowed upon a frightened boy who wrings his hands at the prospect of being told off by nuns. The horror. _

Edward gritted his teeth. "I’m not frightened," he said, but Magnus seemed not to have heard.

_Such a waste, _he mused. _A gift such as this bestowed upon a woman. It should always have been yours, my boy._ He lifted his head, and gave a hard flat smile which made Edward’s skin prickle. _And soon, if you have courage enough to remain resolute, it will be._

* * *

The first time Edward had seen this attic room it had been a mere glimpse, a sliver of darkness glimpsed through a door that had been left enticingly ajar. The stairs had creaked beneath him as he climbed another step, drawn both by curiosity and fear, the need to exorcise his childhood nightmares, the memories of lying awake listening to his mother’s muffled voice weeping in the next room: _ It was the devil, the devil _. He couldn’t seem to shake the certainty that something terrible was waiting for him behind that door.

He froze, catching his lower lip between his teeth, and glanced down the staircase, remembering his father’s warnings and his mother’s terror at their coming here, and reluctantly he turned his back on the open doorway and crept back down the stairs.

The journey to the house alongside his father had been a long and difficult one, the waxy-white pallor of Matthew Renard’s face more pronounced than ever. The leaden clouds leached the colour out of the world, and Edward kept glimpsing faces in the depths of the ancient hedgerows that bordered the country lane.

Since leaving Oxford, his father’s cough had grown steadily worse, and periodically he raised a handkerchief to his mouth as if that could possibly help to stem the wrenching spasms that shook his chest. Once when he lowered the handkerchief, balling it up in his fist, a streak of blood remained on his lower lip. Edward stared at it until his father caught him looking, and then he flinched, looked away.

Through an opening in the hedge a rutted dirt path wound away through a copse of trees. The driver refused to go any further, no matter how Edward’s father raged, and soon they were watching as the hansom drove away, raising a cloud of dust from the dry baked earth.

"Goddamn him," Matthew whispered, his voice hoarse. Edward heard the crackle in his father’s lungs, the bubbles of blood bursting in his throat, and said nothing.

They walked the rest of the way from there, along the heavily rutted path, beneath stooping trees that clasped their branches overhead like clawed hands to form a dark, claustrophobic tunnel. The ground had frozen hard, rimed with ice, and the way was slippery, so that Edward had to pick his steps carefully or risk slipping. Because he had his gaze fixed carefully on the ground, he didn’t see the house until they turned a corner and it seemed to appear out of nowhere like something out of a fairy tale. 

The carvings over the lintel of the door had been scored deep into the stone, and although he’d seen never seen the likes of those glyphs before, they seemed familiar, their meaning graspable if he could only puzzle them out. He stared at them until his father gripped his shoulder and shook him so roughly that his teeth clicked together.

"What did I tell you, boy?" Matthew demanded. "Don’t look too closely."

Edward dropped his gaze and stammered an apology.

Matthew sighed. "Do you remember what I said to you, Edward? Can you recall?"

Edward nodded, trying to keep his voice steady. His father had known the man who lived in this house for a very long time, that he knew, and they’d been close as brothers once, at Oxford and for several years afterwards, but had parted ways when Edward was young. "I’m not to go beyond the parlour. I mustn’t touch anything, nor look too closely at any one thing."

"And?"

He swallowed. "And I’m not to read anything while I’m inside."

"Good." His father raised the handkerchief to his mouth as he coughed again. There was a sound in his chest, wet and wheezy. "Words are like fish-hooks, Edward," he said when he’d recovered. "They lodge inside you. I learnt that the hard way long ago."

"Yes, Father."

"And if your uncle speaks to you?"

"Then I’m to be polite. Nothing more."

"Good." And his father stopped and bent towards him. "He’s not really your uncle, Edward," he said, and his voice seemed all at once to be very faint and distant. "Whatever else happens, remember that."

* * *

The dagger was an ugly thing. It made his skin itch to look at it, the hilt wound about with yellowing strips of linen, stained with years of sweat. The metal with a dull shine that made it seem blunt.

It wasn’t blunt.

He kept thinking of Eliza, remembering her as she had been that midsummer solstice, eighteen or nineteen years old and dressed in sacrificial white, her eyes glazed with drugs and drink. That was the image his thoughts kept returning to, no matter how hard he fought it.

"I cannot do it," he whispered, and his voice sounded far too loud. He lifted his gaze towards the portrait of Magnus, wishing he’d had the guts to have the damn thing burned. Or sold. There’d be plenty of collectors gleeful to get their hands on it, both as an artefact of occultism and as a curiosity: a painting of a man reputed to be the most powerful sorcerer in England, poised in his library surrounded by symbolic items: a ram’s skull; the very dagger that now lay on the table before Edward. It was an excellent likeness of Magnus, too, his face, handsome in a certain light, and cadaverous in another, the full lips and a bony jaw, the cruel amusement about the eyes.

Edward drew a breath. "Do you hear me, Magnus? I will not do it."

At the edge of the room, the shadows gathered. They seemed to seep out of the panelling, out of every crack, every crevice. The gas light flickered and dimmed, and Edward felt something like breath on the nape of his neck. His skin prickled with goosebumps, to to hide his anxiety he reached for the brandy bottle with a trembling hand. It was a mistake. Hovering above his shoulder, so palpable he could already feel it, the moment before a hand descended and clamped down on his shoulder. A voice spoke beside his ear, as quiet as a whisper although the speaker was not whispering, but speaking from a distance.

_ I thought you were no coward. _

Magnus didn’t sound angry, although Edward almost wished he had. Anger he could have prepared himself for, but not this sinking realisation that every test he had so far faced, had been set with the expectation of certain failure. The injustice of it needled at him.

"I’m not," he said, and was instantly furious with himself at the sound of his voice, how he sounded like a whining schoolboy.

_ Then? _

"Will it hurt her?"

_ You know very well that it will not. She has journeyed far beyond pain now. _

Edward poured himself a glass of brandy and swallowed it down, grabbing the dagger with his other hand. He measured its weight, tested its edge gingerly with his thumb, while he thought of Eliza, that midsummer solstice, when she’d been presented to Magnus and his inner Circle, seated on the grass and holding court.

_She has power,_ her mother had said, gazing at Magnus in hope and adoration. He had beckoned Eliza closer, but she stayed where she was until her mother pushed her forward. Then she approached, slowly and reluctantly, her hands twisting at the fabric of her skirt. Magnus indicated that she should kneel with a jerk of his chin and she obeyed, her unfocused gaze roaming all over the gathered circle and their hangers-on. When Magnus shifted onto his haunches, her gaze snapped back towards him as though she’d forgotten he was there.

He brought his finger to her chin and tilted her face up towards his, then to the left and the right, his expression critical. He meant to reject her. Of that, Edward was quite certain.

And perhaps that was exactly how it would have gone if Eliza hadn’t spoken.

"_ Will I do? _" she spat, her voice cracked and slurred.

Edward’s father flinched. In the dreadful silence that followed, Edward forced his attention back to Magnus, who was the stillest of all, his expression unreadable, as if he didn’t know whether to burst out laughing or strike her in a rage. Finally, he did neither, and patted her cheek. "That remains to be seen," he said, and dismissed her with a twitch of his fingers. Edward exhaled in relief.

It was only a brief respite. The Circle took her that night.

He saw her once before they led her away to the festivities, a ghostly figure in white surrounded by robed celebrants in black. They towered over her. Magnus was the tallest of all, and walked beside her, his hand resting on her shoulder. When she faltered, looking back at the house, he turned and followed her gaze. There was no way Magnus could have seen Edward kneeling at the window, he seemed to know he was there. His eyes looked black, like bottomless pits of shadow. He pressed Eliza on, but as she stumbled after the rest of the group, Magnus lingered, staring up at the house with a wolfish grin. Edward seemed to hear his voice whisper in his head: _ She’s mine. _Then they were gone.

Eliza had come back broken, her skin scratched to ribbons and her pristine robes ragged and torn. Bruises blossomed across her chest and back as though she’d been beaten, and there were deep welts on her inner thighs. Yet her eyes had been rapturous, shining with a light that seemed uncomfortably close to madness.

Under normal circumstances, Edward would have given his father a few days to recover his scattered wits, but he went to his father’s room, bursting in without waiting for a response to his knock. "You said you’d protect her."

"There was nothing I could do," Matthew said. There was a note of desolation in his voice which made Edward glad for the ill-lit room. He didn’t want to see his father’s expression. "If she’d only stayed silent… Good God, to the Master of all people. The little fool."

"What happened to her?" He didn’t want to know, but couldn’t seem to stop himself from asking. His father stayed silent for long enough that Edward had all but given up hope of getting an answer. Then he spoke.

"The spirits took her. Magnus called them down, and it broke her. It was…" Matthew broke off, shaking his head, and sank down heavily on the bed. "I’ve never seen anything like it. That sort of power."

Eliza had been a puppet at the mercy of the spirits, his father explained. Her body, mind and soul had been brutalised, and while she might have been able to cope with being taken by one or two, Magnus had called them down in full force, _dozens_ of them, so many the air crackled with energy. At first she’d been laughing, but it hadn’t taken long for her to start screaming, and instead of helping her the atmosphere of raw power had sent the other members of the Circle into a frenzy.

_ Did you hurt her, _Edward wanted to ask, but he couldn’t bring himself to do so. His father wasn’t meeting his gaze. He thought he knew the answer.

He’d seen Eliza in his dreams afterwards, suspended in the air between the trees, her white dress shining like a beacon in the gloomy darkness of the forest as she threw back her head and screamed. It came to him then, that image, for the first time. He summoned it up like an invocation, and he clenched his fists, made his decision then and there.

"I want to join the Circle," he said.

"No."

"I’m old enough–"

"Damn you, I said _ no _." His father rose to his feet, no longer hunched, but at his full height, tall enough to intimidate. "Enough of this, Edward. Return to your room."

Edward hesitated, but from his father’s tone it was clear he had no intention of changing his mind.

So instead, he had gone to Magnus.

* * *

Edward was drunk by the time he’d summoned up enough courage to venture up the narrow creaking steps to the attic room, The air was close and humid, and it reeked of sweat and piss and the salve he’d rubbed so carefully into her skin. There was something wet about the sound of her breathing, something red and clotted choking every breath.

He faltered then kicked the door shut behind him.

Breathing or not, she was already dead. Whatever soul she might once have had had long since departed, and nothing he could do to her now would hurt her.

They’d been close once. She wouldn’t begrudge him this.

The blanket had been dislodged, her nightgown rucked up about her legs. He could see the pale curve of an inner thigh, one of the few remaining sports of perfect skin untouched by the fire. An icy fist clenched in his chest,

He moved to the head of the bed, glancing over the ruin of her face, her hair damp with sweat at the roots, then drew a breath and gripped her hand, half-expecting it to close suddenly around his. He knelt with one knee on the bed and spread her fingers against the headboard, isolating her little finger. Telling himself that the nausea he felt was a natural consequence of such an act, he brought the point of the knife to the joint, thinking of the butchers at work in Smithfield Market.

Not such a demanding task this, in the grand scheme of things. He’d practised on chickens already; had learned to find the places where bone parted from bone with relative ease and only a little persuasion with a sharp knife. And it wasn’t as if this was living flesh. There was no life left in her.

His beloved, beautiful Eliza was now nothing more than meat.

And still he had to conjure up Magnus’s mocking sneer before he could bring himself to make the cut, a chorus of _cowardcowardcoward_ singing in his mind.

The blade crunched through flesh and cartilage, and he was already picturing how little meat there would be on the finger, imagining eating it with horrified fascination in his mind. He sucked air through his mouth in a not altogether satisfactory attempt to quell his rising nausea.

The finger dropped onto the bed. Unnaturally thick blood oozed slowly from the stump, already clotting. He tore his gaze away and stared at the finger, how strange it looked parted from the rest of the hand. It didn’t look quite real.

When he looked up again, Eliza was staring at him.

He recoiled from the bed with a startled cry. She moved, groaning, writhing against the bed. Her maimed hand grasped at the sheet. In horror, he realised she was trying to sit up.

He whirled for the door, heard her choking breath behind him as he wrenched on the handle and hauled it open. Behind him, his name was spoken in a rasping, barely human voice before he jerked the door closed. 

He fumbled for the keys with shaking hands, certain he’d hear the thump of feet on the floorboards, the sound of her lurching towards the door after him, then he found it, locked the door and threw himself down the stairs in a terrified panic, missing his footing on the last couple of steps so that he slipped and banged his tail bone painfully.

_Good God,_ he thought at the bottom of the staircase, his heart pounding so hard he thought he might faint, _I’m every bit the coward Magnus always thought me._

It came back to him them, the sound the knife had made as it bit through her finger, and he shuddered in revulsion.

Naturally, Magnus’s spirit was awaiting him in the parlour, seated in the high backed chair by the fire, his legs crossed and a glass of brandy dangling from his hand.

"You lied to me!" Edward snapped, storming to the sideboard. He poured himself a generous glass with a shaking hand, the liquid slopping over the side. "You told me she was gone. That I wouldn’t be hurting her."

He turned to glare at the ghost, bringing the glass to his lips. Impossible to tell what expression crossed that smear of a face, but when Magnus spoke he sounded bored. _ Had I told you the truth, would you have been able to do what was necessary? _

"Yes! Of course!"

Silence from Magnus. And even though he didn’t make a sound, he still contrived to fill the air with the weight of his contempt.

Edward sank down onto the other chair. "Everything you’ve asked of me, I’ve done. And still it isn’t good enough. Why, Magnus? Because I don’t revel in it? Isn’t it enough that I do it? You’re supposed to be my teacher, my guide..."

_ A failing of mine, I’m afraid. I lack the patience to shepherd a gutless boy who baulks at every passing shadow. _

"If I’m so fucking useless," he began, through clenched teeth, "then why exactly do you bother with me?" 

No answer. 

He swung around and found the other chair empty. There was nothing but the sound of the ticking of the clock, the honey-sweet smell of brandy.

* * *

By the time he returned upstairs, he’d managed to convince himself that what he’d seen had been the result of a combination of an involuntary reflex on her part and imagination on his. She wasn’t awake. She couldn’t be awake. As much as it needled, he wasn't strong enough to bring her back all the way.

But she _was_ awake and waiting for him, sitting on the edge of the bed with her finger nestling in the hollow of her cupped hands.

His guts tightened at the sight of it. How exactly was one expected to go about explaining something like that? ’_ I thought you were already mostly dead and probably wouldn’t mind,’ _didn’t seem quite appropriate.

Then again, Magnus wouldn’t have bothered to explain. He would simply have reached out and taken what he’d wanted.

She looked smaller than he remembered, her skin hatched with scars and furrows, particularly her face and the half of her scalp where the hair had been scorched away. Her bare feet were planted uncertainly on the floor, resting on the blades, and she eyed him cautiously, seeming both to shrink away and towards the light at the same time.

"Good evening, Eliza," he said.

"Edward. I had the strangest dream."

"I can explain," he started, then hesitated, because he wasn’t at all sure that he could. But now that he’d spoken, she was waiting for him to continue. He moved a little closer, noting how her eyes followed the candle greedily as he set it upon the table. "There was a fire, my dear. I’m… Look, I don’t quite know how to say this, so I suppose it’s best just to, um..." He took a breath and hurried on. "The fire killed you. I brought you back."

She nodded slowly, as if that made any kind of sense at all. Then again, she’d known Magnus. She’d spent half her life in this world until she fled from it. Her gaze dropped and skimmed over the floorboards where the chalk marks and droplets of wax were still partially visible on the wood. "I remember the fire, I think."

"Good, that’s… good." He hoped so. Her eyes followed him, but they never seemed to stay on him for long. They kept flicking back to the shadows like she could see something standing at the edge of the room. Gently, careful not to touch her, he sat on the bed beside her.

"Are you in pain?" he asked.

She shook her head. "Not really" She looked down at her palms, staring at the finger as if it was a puzzle she couldn’t quite solve.

"Look, I really can explain," he said again.

"You don’t need to. Did you think I’d forgotten everything I ever learnt in this awful place?"

"You know where we are, then?"

She jerked her head in a rough nod, then threw the finger at him and pushed her balled-up fists into her armpits. "As if I could forget. Magnus Blake’s house."

"My house now," he said, and she turned her gaze on him. "I mean to make it a very different sort of place. He’s dead, Eliza. He died a year ago, and he left me everything he owned. He had no one else. One by one all his followers deserted him and he died a lonely bitter old man."

She was shaking her head, drawing in on herself. "Men like that don’t die. He’d never allow it to happen."

"I swear to you it’s true. He’s gone."

"_Is_ he?"

He hesitated, then tried for a smile. "Well, mostly gone. He can’t hurt you, Eliza, and that I can promise you."

"I wish I could believe you," she whispered, clinging to his hand. "Did you really bring me back?"

He nodded. "And it worked better than I could have hoped."

"Then _thank_ you, Edward. With all my heart. You don’t know what it’s like on the other side. It’s a terrible place, this awful endless darkness which stretches on and on and doesn’t end. I thought it was empty at first, but it’s not, it’s not. Every minute away from there is a blessing, but they won’t let me go. They’ll come to claim me back."

He brushed her hair back from her forehead. Her skin was clammy. "Nothing’s coming to claim you, Eliza."

"They’re already here."

He felt a chill, and glanced up. He had to remind himself that there was nothing there, and after what she’d been through it was hardly surprising that she was seeing things. But even so, if the candle were to go out...

"Please don’t let them take me back." She was clinging to him now, her voice begging. "I’ll do anything, whatever you ask of me you can have. Just please don’t send me back."

"I won’t," he said, pulling her close. "I swear I won’t."

_Careful, dear boy,_ Magnus warned, somewhere in the back of his skull. _You may have brought her back, but that doesn't mean you can keep her here. You’re not nearly strong enough to make that promise._

He tightened his fist around the finger. _ Not yet. _

* * *

He ate the finger, scraping what little meat he could from the delicate little bones with his front teeth, crunching through cartilage and gristle and swallowing it down with a glass of claret. It was every bit as repulsive and unsatisfying as he’d expected, physically at least, but there was something else he couldn’t quite pinpoint, as if it had satisfied something in him beyond bodily hunger. Some other need, but only temporarily and he was left him wanting more. Much, much more.

Eliza’s fault.

The way she’d grasped at him. And how desperate she’d sounded, an echo of countless daydreams over the years when he’d fantasised about her begging him for his forgiveness, for another chance. Of course, he always relented in the end – there was never any question of that, even if he did sometimes make her grovel for a bit, occasionally even on her knees.

It was exactly what he’d longed for, her begging him the way he’d once begged her, and goddamn it, but how _this_ memory hurt. Some party to celebrate her engagement to a boorish oaf who was far too old and far too stupid for her, when Edward, too drunk with heartache to be sensible, had cornered her in a quiet corner of the gardens and pleaded with her to break off her engagement and marry him instead. It wasn’t entirely heartache either: he was still feverish from the lingering after-effects of the drug Magnus had fed him some days before.

"Is it because of Magnus?" he’d asked her, and before she could answer it came spilling out of him, the vow that he’d cast off his apprenticeship, sacrifice everything he’d learned and could ever learn if she agreed to marry him. 

She gave him a look which seemed filled with both sorrow and yearning, and made to move on. To stop her from leaving, he caught hold of her and pinned her up against the wall. He kissed her throat, tasted her skin. Footsteps crunched on gravel, drawing closer. Someone called her name. But there was a hard bite of pleasure at his groin, and the jewels at her throat caught the light from the lanterns and seemed to set her skin aflame as he told her he’d give it all up a thousand times over for her. She laughed bitterly.

"He’d never let you go."

"He let you go, didn’t he?" he said and this drew another humourless laugh.

"_Did_ he?"

"I’ll make him let you go. I’ll do anything, Eliza. Do you want me to kill him? I’d do it, you know. For you."

"There’s nothing he’d love more." She set her hand against his chest. "Please let me go, Edward."

He released her and watched as she adjusted herself, then pushed past him, calling out, "I’m here," to whoever was approaching. The man who was to be her husband, Edward suspected, and unsuccessfully he tried to quash the rising tide of bitterness and envy that rose inside him. She had made her choice.

He waited until she was out of sight, shivering from the cold, then he went the other way, and saw as he turned the corner of the grotto the embers of a cigarette flare orange. Magnus, like the bad fairy at the feast. "What the hell are you doing here?" Edward said before he could stop himself.

"’I’ll do anything’," Magnus repeated. "What a faithful apprentice I have chosen."

Edward’s gut tightened with fear and guilt. He stumbled over his words. "I didn’t… I only meant..."

Magnus waved his words away with nothing but a look of amusement. "Just tell me one thing. Did you mean it?"

"No."

"You’re a dreadful liar, boy." _ Yet another failing _, his tone implied. He tapped ash on the ground, took another drag. "She’s a pretty thing. Have you fucked her?"

"No."

"You could. There are ways and means. I could be the Merlin to your Uther Pendragon. If you wanted."

"What I want is for you to leave her alone."

Magnus exhaled and studied him through the wreath of smoke. "If I do, will you swear not to murder me in my bed?"

"Yes."

"Well then." Magnus caught the cigarette between his lips and placed his hand over his heart. "Upon my honour, I swear to leave the girl be–"

"–Whether in flesh or spirit."

"You do drive a hard bargain. Very well. Whether in flesh or spirit, I will leave her be." From the inside of his jacket he produced a penknife. He unfolded it and hunkered down, slashing the blade across the palm. Clenching his hand into a fist, he’d squeezed his blood out onto the soul. "An oath sworn in blood. She’s safe from me now. Does that satisfy you, Edward?"

Strangely enough, it hadn’t.

* * *

Three days after taking the first finger, he took a second, the ring-finger on the same hand, Or tried to, at least, but it was much harder with her awake and looking at him. He couldn’t seem to bring himself to do it, until she set her hand atop his, and whispered, "It’s all right," and he gritted his teeth and put all his weight on the knife, bringing it sharply down.

She made a noise deep in her throat, a guttural groan that made him wince.

"Oh God, I’m so sorry," he said, gripping her cheeks. Her eyes were hazy, dancing with a half-mad light.

"It doesn’t hurt," she said, staring at the second stump in fascination. Beside it the other stump had already long-since scabbed over and healed.

"I should bandage it..."

She slid the pad of her thumb over the fresh stump, cautiously, as if expecting it to hurt. "There seems little need. See, the bleeding has already stopped." She lifted her gaze to his, her brows knitting in puzzlement. "What am I, Edward? Living or dead? Or something in between?"

He wished he knew.


	2. Chapter Two

The next time he woke to the sound of her screaming, it wasn’t just the wind.

The sound reverberated through the bones of the house as he rose from his bed and lit a candle. The shadows around him eddied, seemed to draw back as he passed through, then closed up again in his wake. He could not seem to shake the unnerving sensation that he was not alone.

He felt that sensation again as he hesitated outside the door to the attic room. Inside, her screams had quietened to sobs, and he was struck by the notion that the room beyond was filled with movement, a constant swarming mass of creatures, and that whatever was waiting for him on the other side meant him harm. A creeping sensation crawled over his skin, and he started away from the door before he caught himself and opened the door.

She was crouched on the bed, rolled into a tight ball. Just her, and he smiled at his own foolishness; how easy it was when you’d just woken up to get carried away by fanciful imaginings, but as he stepped through the doorway his smile stiffened.

The room was thick with shadow and the starlight streaming through the windows seemed for an instant to glimmer on the things hidden in the darkness. He caught only the slightest glimpse, but it was enough to fix images in his mind: impressions of scales and fish-belly white undersides; gleaming chitin and glistening wet, white flesh; gaping mouths filled with sharp, dirty teeth and lolling tongues.

Then the candlelight took over and there was nothing there. Nothing but retreating shadows and the woman cowering on the bed.

Even her sobs had fallen silent. She had curled in on herself, with her legs pulled up and her face pressed into her knees. Her arms were wrapped around them, with one arm reaching up and over her head to grip the back neckline of her nightgown and pull the knot of her body tighter. 

She gasped and recoiled as he sat on the bed.

"It’s me, Eliza. It’s me."

She uncurled, the candlelight glinting in the whites of her panicked eyes. With her teeth bared, she seemed not a woman at all but an animal that might turn on him in its fright and rip his throat out. Then the moment passed, and she blinked slowly, her wits returning even if her breath remained shallow. "Are they gone?"

Edward hadn’t meant to look around, but he did anyway. "You were dreaming, Eliza. There’s nothing here. There never was."

She shook her head and unfolded a little more with a shudder. As if seeking comfort, she edged a little closer to him, so close he could feel how hard she trembled. "They’re afraid of the light," she said. "Leave me some candles."

He hesitated, gaze darting up to the unshuttered windows. There were five of them, spaced at intervals around the room. They were high up, but she could still have reached them if she stood on the edge of the bed. And while the house was far from the nearest village, it wasn’t so isolated that the light of a candle might not attract attention. 

So far she had seemed numbly grateful and acquiescent to his wishes, but Eliza had always been clever, and he couldn’t be certain that her obedience wasn’t a trick to keep him off his guard. With a candle she might be able to signal for help, and if she were to be discovered like this, locked away and with... well, with pieces missing, that would be hard to explain.

"Eliza..." He cupped her cheeks and hesitated, trying to find the words to explain. "Perhaps," he lied.

Beneath his palms her skin was cool, not quite corpse-cold, but a few degrees cooler than a living woman’s, another reminder of her tenuous position between life and death. He’d brought her back, yes, but he wasn’t entirely certain he could keep her here.

Fascinated, he ran his thumbs along the rough-ridged texture of her cheekbones. They were charred and split, and her skin had a leathery texture, like a mummy’s. She ought to have been hideous, but her eyes were bright, filled with mingled hope and fear, so that his curiosity was edged with a sharper pang of desire. How fragile, she was, how delicate and vulnerable. She was lucky that he meant her no harm. Did she feel pain, he wondered. Or pleasure?

She should have been monstrous. Magnus had once told him that there was a very particular kind of beauty in having someone utterly in your control and terrified. Edward hadn’t credited it then, but he was starting to see now what Magnus might have meant. Of course, it wasn’t him she was afraid of.

In the back of his mind, Magnus’s quiet, insidious voice whispered, _ Are you quite certain of that, dear boy? _

She seemed to be responding to the touch of his fingers on her cheeks. Her eyes fluttered closed, the eyelids translucent and as fragile as the wings of an insect. He touched the tip of his finger lightly to one lid, felt her eye quivering beneath.

The way she trembled struck him as almost virginal. She couldn’t be, of course: her husband might have been an idiot, but even he wasn’t quite _that_ incompetent.

"Please," she whispered again, and this time he couldn’t bring himself to lie.

"I can’t," he said as gently as he could. "Perhaps in time, we shall see." He hesitated. "But I could stay a while, if you wish."

She stared at him, and for a long moment he thought she hadn’t understood. Then slowly she gave a shaky nod of her head, and closed her eyes.

This time it was his lips he brushed against her eyelids, each one in turn. His tongue flickered out to brush against the skin, then he brought his mouth down to hers, and kissed her rough, chapped lips. At first he was gentle, keeping his lips closed, his hand skimming along her shoulder, and down her upper arm to her breast. He cupped it through the smooth cotton of the nightgown, feeling the rough texture of the skin underneath.

He was still clinging to the hope that perhaps her position between life and death wasn’t so precarious as he feared, and certainly the reaction of her body as he circled his fingers around her nipple though the cotton seemed a natural one, the nipple puckering and hardening at his touch. 

Eliza lowered her head shyly, her hair falling over her face, and he pushed it back so he could see her expression while he teased her nipple until her breath caught in her throat. Then he leaned forward and fastened his mouth around it, drawing it between his lips and capturing it between his teeth. He soaked the fabric with his saliva, closed his teeth around it and nipped, not quite hard enough for it to truly hurt, but enough for the first note of pain to come creeping in. She arched towards him.

He reached for the hem of her nightgown, and drew it up over her legs, bunching it up in his hand. She was sitting with her legs open, and he caught her knee to stop her from bringing her legs together, restrained her gently. "It’s all right," he murmured when she looked pleadingly at him. "It’s all right."

He pushed her back and slipped down to kneel between her legs, his hands on her thighs where her skin was perfect, flawless. He brought his hand to her cleft, to its folds and crevices and the gleam of wetness hidden inside its folds, drew his fingers along it, dipping inside, then up to the nub which he was careful not to touch, not yet. At a soft sigh he looked up and saw with a twinge of discomfort that she’d turned her face towards the candle on the nightstand. Her eyes were fixed on the light with a hungry intensity, as if the light was all she craved.

Ah well, he’d soon change that.

He could feel the tension in her thighs, the muscles taut as though she didn’t know whether she wanted to press them together to deny him access or to spread them apart and beg for more. She was growing wetter, the only sound in the room aside from their breathing the wet sounds his fingers made then they slipped inside her. So she was like a living woman there too, he thought, with a natural physiological response.

Judging by how she looked away from him, covering her face like an innocent ashamed of the pleasure he was drawing from her and the natural reactions of her body, it was clear her husband hadn’t ever pleasured in this way, or most likely in any other. Probably all he had ever done in their darkened marriage bed was pull up her nightgown without preamble and thrust himself inside her, leaving her wet and sticky with nothing more than his seed, sore and aching and hungry for something she couldn’t have understood.

But perhaps not, he thought as he eased a second finger inside her, and then a third; she was so tight that he could almost imagine she _was_ a virgin. Perhaps her fool of a husband had no interest in women, or had always been too drunk to sustain an erection, or too stupid to know what to do with it and had shot his seed all over her belly in his haste to consummate their union. Edward pictured that, the semen glistening like pearls on her skin, and shuddered at the thought, his cock pressing hard and urgent against his trousers. He reached down to adjust it and gripped it through the wool, imagining her fingers curled around it and sliding along its length.

And more: an old fantasy, this, and one that had sustained him through many nights. He thought of the woods where the Circle had taken her on that midsummer solstice long ago, when the spirits had claimed her and worked her body like a puppet. He never had learned the truth about what had happened that night although he’d thought about it often enough, imagining them all fucking her, one by one or all at once: his father, Magnus, all the Circle entwined, conjoined, a seething mass of bodies and limbs, a circle of cunts and cocks with Eliza at the centre, her skin shining with semen and sweat, and blood. Magnus taking her from behind and turning to bare his teeth at Edward in a feral grin, his eyes shining white in the deepening twilight. Sometimes in the fantasy they seemed like wolves.

Edward reached up to caress her breasts through the nightgown, found her nipples stiff and hard and the wetness of his own saliva against the hollow of his palm. He pinched her nipple lightly between his finger and thumb, drawing it to a stiff hard peak. "Do you want me to stop?" he asked.

She shook her head, closing her eyes as if ashamed of her own pleasure. "No," she whispered, her voice hoarse. "Please don’t leave me like this."

"He never did this to you, did he?" he said, his voice low, dark. She glanced at him through her hair, gasping as he gathered up moisture on his thumb and brought it to her clitoris, circling around the edge so as not to touch it directly. God, he’d spent so many years dreaming of exactly this, of having her spread before him, begging him, urging him on. His own breath was shallow, and it was growing harder to ignore the ache of need at his groin.

"Did he touch you here?" he asked, and for the first time brushed her clitoris directly. The touch was butterfly-soft brush, but she jolted as if stung by an electric spark. She rolled her hips upwards in search of further contact, but he wasn’t going to make it that easy for her. After having waited so long, he wanted to hear her beg.

In fact, he was a little surprised at how badly he still wanted her.

She hadn’t yet answered him. With his hands beneath her thighs, he pulled her legs apart, heard the wet liquid sound as the lips parted. The dark earthy scent of her roiled up, and his mouth went dry.

"Did he?" he repeated insistently, and she shook her head, eyes closed to slits.

"No," she whispered. "He never did. Not the way you do." And she let out a low groan and turned her face towards the candlelight, pushing her hips upwards insistently.

He grinned, and brought his fingers back to her sex. At the same moment he slid them inside her, he joined them with his mouth, bringing his tongue to her clitoris. She cried out, arching her back, as he flicked his tongue over and around the nub, driving his fingers deeper inside her. The walls of her sex clutched at them, as he worked at the sensitive spot on the inner wall and drew her clitoris into his mouth, sucking on it gently. 

Her hand tightened in his hair, fingers biting tight, as with his other hand beneath her backside he half-lifting her from the bed to allow himself deeper access. To her, it must have felt like being suspended in mid-air. He tasted the rich sweet taste of her on his tongue, but beneath it something else, the faint taint of decay.

He felt her body shudder, and then she was coming. He sucked harder on her clitoris, raising his gaze, wanting to see her expression as she came, but she’d thrown an arm across her face to hide if from view. Her moans of pleasure were muffled as she bit down on the meat of her arm, so there was nothing but the way her hips were grinding up towards him and the muscles of her passage clenching tight around his fingers to indicate the loss of her control.

As she recovered, her hair trailing across her cheeks, lips parted, He slipped his fingers free of her, and fumbled with the fastenings of his trousers. Freeing himself, he had to force himself to slow down, to treasure this moment, the gathering hope that perhaps his growing suspicion that her marriage had never truly been consummated might have some truth to it. He shivered with a thrill of excitement at the thought and slid his fist slowly along his shaft. Her eyes opened and her gaze dropped towards it, but with the way the shadows fell across her face it was impossible to read her expression.

"Take the nightgown off," he said, and stilled his hand because he could feel himself drawing close to the edge. She sat forward with only the slightest moment of hesitation, and obeyed, drawing it up and over her head, revealing her breasts, the pattern of ridged scars that covered almost every inch of her skin. He took it from her and threw it aside, then brought her hand to his erection.

Her fingers brushed uncertainly along its length, and he clasped her wrist, but let her take the lead, his eyes closing as she stroked him, her touch so slow and uncertain he had to bite back a curse. Her palms were scarred too and the rough texture was a source of constant stimulation, especially when she reached the head and ran her hand over it. She gasped as his cock twitched involuntarily at the touch, and he thought of her mouth opening, of her swallowing him up, and he groaned, steadying himself with his hand on her shoulder.

"Anything," she said. Her voice sounded strange. It didn’t sound quite like her, and with his eyes closed he couldn’t tell if it was her who’d spoken or someone else, a shadow dripping poison into his ear. But at that moment he didn’t care.

He knocked her hand away, gripped her hips, and pulled them up off the bed so he could position the head of his erection against her entrance. With his hands beneath her backside, supporting her, he sheathed himself inside her. She was slick and wet, offering no resistance to his entrance, although she was even tighter than he’d expected. He forced himself to slow down, his next thrust more gentle.

He could still taste her on his lips and tongue. And there seemed something deliberate about the cross-hatching of scars and the shadows they cast over her skin, as if meaning could be found in the patterns they made. 

His next thrust was deeper and harder, and she responded, lifting her hips up to meet his. He reached down to the place where he was joined with her, where her skin was stretched around his shaft, and with the next few thrusts, gathered wetness with his fingers and used it to rub her clitoris without mercy. This time he meant to see her face as she came.

"Touch your breasts," he ordered, his voice rough. He was beginning to lose control, the rising tide of pleasure threatening to overwhelm him, but he was determined to bring her with him, to make her come again before he spilled his seed inside her.

She hesitated again before she obeyed and dropped her hands to her breasts, her movements uncertain at first, her gaze darting from the candle to his face, and the expressions she saw there must have emboldened her because she moaned shyly, and began to play with herself with more certainty, with a familiarity that he guessed came from her pleasuring herself in private.

Her fingers circled around her nipples, making them pucker and swell, pinching at them so hard he was certain she must be hurting herself. She cupped her breasts and arched upwards towards him, as though begging him to kiss them, to lick and suck and bite, and he wanted to, fuck he wanted to, but he’d found her clitoris now, and in this position, her body was laid bare before him, splayed like an open book.

He was close, watching her caress her breasts, imaging her doing the same and more in bed at night, unsatisfied and aching while her husband lay asleep and snoring beside her. Her hand between her legs, fingers buried in her slick wetness, and dear God, but he wanted to watch her doing that to herself. He longed to kneel between her legs and watch her burying her fingers inside herself, wanted to join her fingers with his mouth, his tongue, hot and wet running between her fingers up to the knuckles, wanted to draw those fingers out, and make her suck her juices from them while he buried his face where they had been, to drink from her as though she were a chalice. He wanted to swallow her up in a way that he’d wanted with no other woman.

All through this he rubbed at her clitoris, no longer trying to be gentle, either with that or with his almost brutal thrusts inside her, and she was groaning at the rough contact. Relentlessly, he brought her to the edge and threw her over, and he grabbed for her arms before she could cover her face again, gripping her wrists hard enough that he might have left bruises on living skin. He watched her face as she climaxed, wishing he could swallow up her pleasure, and then, fuck, he was coming, and _ hard _, with that image of swallowing her up.

He’d never experienced an orgasm like it, a submersion into the world between, into the ocean of magic that waited on the other side of the veil, so elusive that even Magnus rarely got anything more than glimpses. Sex, done right – and dear fucking God, this encounter had been done _ right _– could be a portal to that world. Like hallucinogenic drugs, the spilling of blood, and the consumption of flesh, it unlocked a doorway.

In the moment of spending, he glimpsed the truths inscribed on her skin. How her scars held the key to an endless source of esoteric knowledge if he could only crack the code, but its meaning lay tantalisingly just out of reach.

He saw it again afterwards, this truth, pulsing in the rush of blood through the veins of his eyelids. Heard it in her gasping and the wet slick sounds her body made as he pulled free of her, still semi-hard, but wilting. Another kind of truth.

He dropped on the bed, and grasped for her hand, brought it, with his eyes still closed, to his mouth to gently kiss the scarred back.

_You’re mine,_ he thought, and felt for the first time in a long time, a moment of perfect blessed peace.

He thought of the seed he’d spilled inside her, and how she smelled of him, his seed mingling with her moisture. She’d been far wetter than he’d expected, as wet as a living woman would have been. And another possibility occurred to him, the first glimmerings of an idea which he considered, and then set aside for the moment, thinking it almost certainly impossible.

Outside the wind whistled around the windows. The shadows eddied, regrouping as the light of the candle flickered. _Not just life they feed on,_ he thought, dazed, and then he wondered where the thought had come from.

There was nothing hiding in the shadows. Except, perhaps, for the dead man to whom this house once belonged. Probably best not to let Eliza know that. He doubted she’d find it particularly comforting.

The shadows unnerved him. He could feel his strength ebbing, slipping away, and his stomach growled. He was hungry.

Beside him Eliza rose up, her arms crossed over her breasts. She was watching the shadows, her expression fretful. "You should fetch the knife," she said.

Edward bit his lip. 

His plans had already gone awry. He’d never intended to keep her unnaturally suspended between life and death for so long. By now if he’d followed his original plan, he would already have feasted upon her heart and claimed her powers permanently for himself. As happy as he was to have his Eliza back, her waking up had proved a complication. And fucking her certainly hadn’t simplified matters.

He’d wanted her too deeply and for too long, that was the trouble. Now that he had her, he couldn’t bear the thought of losing her. But perhaps he didn’t have to.

"What if I could put an end to this?" he said.

She turned her gaze on him, studied him with a glimmer of hopeless, helpless hope. "How?" 

Unfortunately, he didn’t yet have an answer to that. Edward tried to look mysterious, and eventually she nodded. 

"But," she said, "in the meantime..."

Edward hesitated, but she was right. It was a miracle he’d been able to bring her back at all, let alone keep her alive for this long, and his strength was already waning. If he left it for too long she might very well slip back into unconsciousness and death.

He stood up. As he reached for the candle she caught his wrist.

"Leave it here," she pleaded.

He hesitated, but he was in the mood to be indulgent and her expression was so fearful that despite his misgivings, he nodded and left without it, hoping to God it was the right decision. It wasn’t until he was in the study with the knife in his hand that he realised he’d left the door not just unlocked, but open, and in that moment he was beset by the image of Magnus in the chair, regarding him with contemptuous amusement. _ You bloody fool. _

But the front door itself was locked, he thought, with burgeoning relief, and all the windows latched. The house was sealed up tight. She wouldn’t be able to get out, and what was more–

Then he heard, at the edge of his hearing, the scrape of furniture on wooden floorboards. Eliza, no doubt, dragging the bed across the floor so she could balance on it to reach the windows. Even now she might be holding the candle up to the glass, using it to signal for aid. And that weak flicker of light might well be enough to be spotted from afar, to bring curious eyes this way.

"_ Christ _."

He whirled and ran through the house, tripping on the stairs and banging his knee painfully on a step, so that when he stumbled through the door to the attic room, he was half-blinded with pain and rage, and certain that he’d catch Eliza in an act of betrayal.

But he didn’t. She was as he’d left her sitting on the bed, still naked, her hands resting on her legs and her expression one of concern and not-quite hidden fear. Thrown off balance, he stared at her, uncertain now of his own fury, the pain in his knee almost forgotten.

"Sorry," he said. "I thought..." He glanced around the room, the memory of that scraping sound still in his mind. "I could have sworn..."

"Sworn what?"

He shook his head. "It doesn’t matter. This house is full of old creaks and rattlings. I’m hearing things."

She nodded looking serious, and her gaze shifted to the knife.

"Do it," she said, and for a moment he wasn’t quite sure what she meant. Then she shifted, holding out her leg, she seems different, and he realised. At first the emotion that flooded him was revulsion. Then he saw wetness, hers and his, glistening on the pale perfect skin of her inner thigh, and he shivered with a sudden ache of longing to drop his head and lick it from her skin.

He moved to the bed and knelt before her, trying not to look at her eyes, and the bleakness he was certain he’d find there. His hands shook as he brought the blade to the meat of her thigh. They trembled so much, she had to put her hands over his to steady them the same way she’d done when he took her second finger, but this time she turned her face away as if this was something she could not bear to see.

With creeping horror, Edward realised he was already salivating at the thought of the meat. He could already taste it, his mouth flooding with saliva, as the blade pared her flesh from bone, and it was strangely bloodless, the sweetly pallid pink of veal, glistening with only a little blood. His blood was afire, his breathing shallow. His wrist cramped, and he shifted his grip on the knife, swallowing down his saliva, but more instantly spilled into his mouth. He squeezed the hilt harder, until his tendons ached and his knuckles were bloodless, until the blade reached the thickest part of her calf and began to surface.

It was, he thought, rather like a fishmonger filleting a fish, and he was shuddering then, shaking so hard he was certain he’d throw up. His stomach knotted.

Easier to tell himself that his mouth was flooding with saliva as a prelude to puking out of disgust than because he was already imagining how sweet and tender that meat was going to taste. It would certainly be more palatable than her fingers had, and what other treats might be in store? Scooping out the hollows of her cheeks? Her buttocks? Would he fry the meat in fat rendered from her breasts?

He laughed, the sound high and verging on hysterical. He couldn’t lie to himself, not about this. It would only make the truth harder to face in the long run. One of the things Magnus had taught him when he’d forced Edward to confront an uncomfortable truth: that he hadn’t approached Magnus all those years ago in search of revenge for what had been done to Eliza, but because he had wanted to be part of it. He had wanted to see, to know, to understand, and those were truths that Magnus had ever been ready to show him. Magnus had leaned closer, his breath warm against Edward’s ear, the scent of brandy on his breath as he whispered truths indistinguishable from lies and lies indistinguishable from truth, while Edward, then only eighteen, fidgeted in his chair, his cock painfully hard, trying to hide it, trying to look as though he hated Magnus, instead of envying him.

That wasn’t a good place for his mind to go.

"Oh God." He shuddered again, his grip slackening.

It struck him how young she was, how young they both were. Stolen of their childhoods by the lives they’d led, betrayed by their parents who had willingly led them into the lair of a monster, they’d been forced to grow up fast. Under normal circumstances, they should have had most of their lives ahead of them.

He caressed her cheek and something flickered in her eyes. When she said his name, he picked up the knife and finished the cut, parting the slab of meat from the rest of her body. He laid it reverentially upon the bed next to the knife.

She’d felt no pain, he thought distantly, dreamily. Even though a considerable chunk of her leg had been almost carved away, still attached by a narrow scrap of flesh, it hadn’t hurt her. She was beyond pain now, beyond life, and despite her wounds, despite the scars, she was transcendent. He envied her. 

"We never really had a chance did we?" he asked.

He wasn’t really expecting an answer but she shook her head. She seemed drunk, the furrow stretching the length of her calf already starting to close up. "Not while I was alive."

"You are alive."

In reply she gestured to her leg, to the filleted meat. Her eyes were sad even though she was smiling at him. He licked his lips, trying not to look at it, trying not to imagine how good it was going to smell when fried up, the skin crisped in the pan, the sweet roast pork aroma and how it would nourish him in more ways than one. "Living women bleed, Edward. You said it yourself. You don’t know what I am."

"You’re my Eliza," he said, trying to keep his voice light. "You always were."

_ Even when she didn’t agree: _Magnus’s voice dripped like poison into his ear.

He picked up the meat, and leaned forward to kiss her forehead. Again he had to force himself to slow down, to make his movements seem unhurried, to hide the urge to start cramming the meat into his mouth there and then, without even cooking it, just ripping at the flesh with his teeth.

She caught his wrist."The candle, Edward," she begged.

"I’ll arrange something soon," he assured her, smiling apologetically as her eyes flared in fright and dismay. Something needled at Edward, a needle-sharp stab of doubt and resentment – had that been the sole reason she’d let him fuck her? Because she wanted something from him?

"Edward, please–"

He shushed her, his hand on her cheek, his touch gentle. She flinched, but held herself still, trembling, her gaze fixed on him. "Tomorrow," he said firmly, in a voice that brooked no disagreement. He’d judged it well, he thought: kindly, but stern, and with the very slightest edge of a warning. Had seen Magnus do something very similar, stilling a woman on the edge of hysteria with the same voice, the same gentle touch that promised he was more than capable of shedding that gentle demeanour should it be necessary. "I’ll make sure you have candles of your own very soon."

Her lips wrinkled back from her teeth. The transcendent beauty he thought he’d glimpsed earlier was now gone. Her face was a grotesque mask, her eyes burning. "Then stay," she begged, clawing at him. "Please don’t leave me here."

He jerked out of her grip so hard she almost fell off the bed, backing away. "No," he said, heard how his voice was trembling and hardened it. He opened his mouth to ask her if that had been the only reason she’d let him take her, because she wanted something from him, and his throat closed up. _ Well, _ Magus murmured in his ear, and Edward smelt brandy and pipe smoke, _ What on earth did you expect, dear boy? She’s mine. She was always mine. _

"No," he snapped and she cowered away. He snatched up the candle, and the shadows lurched and lunged at the edges of the room. It would do her some good, he thought, backing towards the door. A night or two in darkness to remind her… of what? How much she owed him? Or how much power he wielded over her? "It’s for your own good."

"I know," she whispered. "I know, Edward, but..."

"Enough," he snapped, allowing something more of Magnus to creep into his voice. He was gratified and only a little guilty at how she flinched. His leg hurt; he felt like he’d been flayed, as though it had been his flesh into which they’d cut, rather than hers. And he would have been willing to do it, he thought, if he could have been sure that she understood; if it could have made her see that he would have taken every bit of her pain onto himself if he could have done so. If it would have made her happy. If it made her his.

It was late, well into the early hours of the morning, so there couldn’t have been more than a couple of hours until dawn, but this was the very darkest hour of the night.

He stopped in the doorway and glanced back at the bed, now dim and indistinct. "I’ll see you in the morning." He waited a moment for her to respond, to give her the chance to apologise, but she stayed silent. "Good night, Eliza," he said and left, closing the door behind him. He locked it, the snap of the key very loud in the cramped corridor, and he pictured her wincing at the sound, closing her eyes in a room that must now have been virtually pitch-black.

Could she see the difference if she closed her eyes, or had he truly left her in total darkness, with a choice of the haze of red on the inside of her eyelids or the dancing shadows and the hungry things that dwelled within them?

He waited for her to call him back, and had she done so, he told himself he would have gone to her, would have kissed her hands and begged her forgiveness and told her that of course he’d stay, that he’d leave her the candle, that she could have a thousand candles if she wished, and light them, every one, so that not a single shadow was allowed to linger.

But she didn’t call out to him, and so he started down the stairs. It wasn’t until he’d reached the kitchen that she started to scream, the sound pure terror, channelled and magnified by the strange acoustics of the house.

Edward listened in frozen horror to the pitch of her screams, the moments of silence in between that were somehow worse. He couldn’t make out words, but he knew she was begging him to have mercy, pleading with him to come back.

Go to her, he thought, but he was hungry, _so_ hungry, and he was, he realised, right about how delicious the meat would smell and taste.

So he stayed in the kitchen and ate his meal, and after a few bites it wasn’t quite as hard to tell himself that the sound he could hear was merely the sound of the wind.

Besides, it was for the best. There was nothing lurking in the shadows, and it would do her good to face her fears and come to understand how much she owed him. How much she needed him. The sooner she realised that, the safer she’d be.

Like so many of the other unpleasant things he’d had to do over the years, this was entirely necessary.


	3. Chapter Three

There were a great many more necessary things over the weeks and months that followed.

Edward left her for three days in the end, intending each morning to venture up to the attic room to check on her. Each night when darkness fell he heard her crying out, cries of terror which made him grateful for the curtains that surrounded his bed and muffled all sound. From time to time he caught snatches of words: his name, over and over again, her begging him to _ have pity, have mercy _ , and _ they’reherethey’reherethey’rehere. _

There were times when he almost broke, almost went to her. He’d get as far as the stairs, careful to avoid the creaking steps that might reveal his presence. And inside he’d hear her pacing the room, her rapid steps as she crossed the room like a caged tiger, the thump as she reached the wall and slapped her palms against the plaster.

He told himself she was safe. She had enough water, and in any case he wasn’t entirely certain that she needed sustenance of any kind. Certainly she’d eaten nothing in the time she had been his guest: the food had always gone untouched. Nor could he recall seeing her drink anything. Perhaps she was beyond such trivial matters as food and drink.

But while that might be true, the same was not true of him. The meat he’d carved from her had been delicious, every bit as sweet and succulent as he had imagined. He’d tried to make it last, but he’d found himself taking the last bite without realising, and the satisfaction he’d felt had scarcely lasted a day before he woke ravenous in the night, his stomach growling.

Every time he found himself wavering, he remembered that image of her balanced on the bed, desperately signalling to the outside. Unfair, perhaps, but he couldn’t risk it. The people of the village had never liked this house, and they’d loathed Magnus despite his charm and generosity. They were superstitious – although in all fairness they were probably right to be – fearful of the sorcerer in their midst and of their daughters who seemed half in love with him, of the rumours of Magnus claiming _ jus primae noctis _like a feudal lord of old.

The antipathy had spread to Edward in his turn, and they wouldn’t need much of an excuse to turn against him. One look at what had been done to her and they’d most likely tear him to pieces. And then Eliza would be helpless, gradually decaying without his help; the rot spreading through her, from the inside out as she returned to the state from which he’d rescued her.

On the fourth night the screams stopped. He was in the library, bent over a book rubbing at his forehead in an attempt to assuage the pulsing headache behind his eyes, and didn’t realise at first. Gradually, he became aware of the silence, and waited for the screams to start again. It was an overcast night again, rain lashing against the glass, so the attic room would be pitch black. And still nothing came.

Unnerved, he closed the book, and ventured through the hall, past the main staircase to the smaller set of stairs in the west wing, which led up to the attic room. It wasn’t the first time he’d been lulled into a false sense of security, but still he heard nothing.

He crept up the stairs, feeling like an interloper, and paused outside the door, at a loss as to what to do.

Had he left her too long? Perhaps she did need water after all. If she’d spilled what she had...

_ Leave her. _

He couldn’t tell if the thought belonged to him or to Magnus. It was a quiet voice, numb and sad. Almost frightened. He stared at the door, tensed, ready for something to thump against it, for a cry to ring out. For warm breath against his ear.

Was she lying dead on the bed? Had he killed her?

_ You don’t need to know. Turn around. Walk away. Leave this house and never come back. _

Slowly, he let out a shaky breath and grinned. "As if I could," he murmured, and felt a shiver of something inside him. Relief? Regret? He couldn’t tell, but slowly he pulled out his keys.

For a moment when he opened the door, the shadows seemed alive. They surged around the bed like an ocean of ink, waves licking at the feet of the bed, and they drew back more slowly from the light of the candle than seemed entirely natural.

Eliza was, thank God, still alive. She lay in a foetal position on top of the covers, her naked back a patchwork of scars and shadow. She seemed smaller than he remembered, and the leathery nature of her skin reminded him uncomfortably of the body of a mummy he’d seen once that had been pulled out of a bog. 

"Eliza?" His voice sounded wrong, too high-pitched, like he was afraid of her.

She stirred, turning her head a fraction. He saw her hair tumbling down, the wet gleam of an eye in dessicated flesh. With a rasping sound she mouthed his name, and he realised just why her screams had stopped: her voice had given out.

"Oh..." He sighed and went to her. Sitting on the bed, he pried her hands out from where they were curled up into her chest beneath her chin. Her eyes rolled up towards him. Glazed, as though her will had snapped.

"I’m sorry." She mouthed the words with a faint painful rasping in her throat. It sounded painful.

"It’s all right," he told her, stroking her cheek. "But do you see, Eliza, do you see why I must keep you here? You remember what they used to say about Magnus, don’t you? I’m not him, of course, I’m nothing like him." And here he paused, waiting for some sign of acknowledgement from her, but she only stared up at him dumbly. He couldn’t even tell if she understood. "But if they saw you like this, they wouldn’t understand. They’d separate us, my love. And then there’d be nobody who could help you. Do you understand?"

Another moment or two of dumb silence, and then she gave a twitch of her head which he decided to interpret as agreement. He smiled in relief and gathered her up from the bed, clasping her against his chest. She was stiff at first, then she was clinging on to him, her fingers tightening in his hair, her face buried in his throat. She squirmed against him and brought her mouth close to his ear.

"I was so afraid. I thought you wouldn’t come back. I thought you’d left me."

"Never," he promised. "Never again, my love. I just… I needed you to understand."

_A learning experience, _Magnus said, amused. _There’s no faster teaching method than cruelty. It seems you learned that lesson well._

"Shut up," Edward muttered and Eliza lifted her face to look at him. Her eyes were luminous. They shone from within with grace and forgiveness and trust.

He stayed with her that night, lay beside her beneath the covers in a room lit with the soft golden glow of the candlelight and water light dancing on the walls in labyrinthine patterns. He meant to let her rest, but then she stirred against him and woke him from his doze with a hard ache in his groin and the pit of his belly.

And rather like breaking in a wild horse, things were different after that.

In the daylight he climbed a rickety ladder and had the windows shuttered, annoyed with himself that he hadn’t had the foresight to do this from the start. With the windows shuttered, he felt safe enough to allow her candles, the finest beeswax candles he could purchase, which he parcelled out a few at a time, although he longed to fill the room with them, have candles burning upon every surface in an extravagant gesture of love and trust.

There were other gifts, too: items of furniture, including a set of shelves which he began to fill with a slow accumulation of books, and a writing desk. He wanted to bring her a wardrobe, but the effort of manhandling it up the narrow attic staircase on his own proved too difficult, and so he settled for an old school trunk instead. He bought her dresses and jewellery, and took delight in handing over each gift while Magnus murmured in his ear, _ Are you quite certain you can trust her? _

Manipulative to the last. It was always one of his favourite games, that old bastard, how much pleasure he took in turning his followers against each other, but it wasn’t going to work this time. 

By now Edward was certain he could trust her. He regretted what he’d had to do, but it had worked. She understood now. He could see that in the trust that shone from her eyes, the way she’d smile and lay her hand upon his.

With every act of love and every bite of flesh he took he could feel the bond between them strengthening.

She looked better too. Her skin was still leathery, shrinking close to the bones, but it was more supple now, thanks to the salve he rubbed into her skin, twisting her hair into a rope and out of the way, while he sat astride her to work the oil into every inch of her skin, even the scar tissue that whorled around the naked hole in the side of her head where she’d lost her ear to the fire.

She fascinated him now. She always had, of course, but he found his interest in the banal stuff of beauty waning. True beauty didn’t lie in perfect skin and full breasts, but in imperfections: in scars and missing fingers, the hollow pits left behind when he cut away the extraneous meat, stripping her back to the bone.

Not that he didn’t appreciate the rest, of course, he thought, as he drew his fingers down her spine, digging them in hard enough that it would have hurt a living woman. Her nerve endings had been seared away, so he had to dig deep and pinch hard to make sure she felt it: there was a certain freedom in that, in knowing how much license he could take with her body before he hurt her.

He wasn’t entirely certain that he could. Nothing he had thrown at her so far – hot wax dripped from the candles, a single searing drop on the tip of each nipple; the blade of the knife carving so deep into her flesh that it hit the bone – seemed to have hurt her. He’d considered, too, giving up the knife and using his teeth: after all if the individual acts of sex and consuming flesh could each open up doorways, then how much more powerful could they be together? He’d dreamed of biting into her, tearing off a mouthful of flesh at the peak of his orgasm and swallowing it down, and he had indeed bitten down on her shoulder at his moment of spending, but not quite hard enough to break the skin. Not yet. For the moment, that seemed a step too far.

He already loved her of course. He’d loved her all his life, right from the very moment they first met. He hadn’t thought himself capable of loving her more than he already did, but as so often seemed to be the case he’d been wrong about that. His love for her deepened. Intensified, somehow, by everything they’d been through.

For Edward, there had been other women, but never any he’d wanted so deeply as Eliza. He treasured like hoarded jewels every precious moment from the long time he’d known her, every look they’d shared, every brush of skin to skin. He would have given her the world in return for what she’d already given to him. Bringing her back, and so completely, had been a powerful work of magic and he doubted he could have succeeded in bringing anyone back other her. 

She was perfect. She was his.

And all this combined to a single certainty: he could not lose her.

He wanted to keep her, even if it had to be in this state between life and death. But he was caught on a tightrope across a chasm: with every bite of her flesh he grew more powerful, but she diminished, and when he didn’t eat, his tenuous grip on the borrowed magic began to slip and he risked losing her completely.

In desperation, he turned to the books, combing Magnus’s extensive library for some hint of how to proceed, some clue in the volumes of occultism that he’d read countless times before. He followed clues, chasing them down their rabbit holes like Alice, hunted down obscure and eye-wateringly expensive imported grimoires from booksellers who must have rubbed their hands in glee to see him coming, and gradually a possibility began to present itself.

It was so slight, so tenuous, that at first he dismissed it, but the seed had been planted, and when he found no other possibility, it took root. It grew a little stronger each time he spilled his seed inside her, each time their fluids mingling and he saw all the secrets of the universe written upon her flesh.

_ What if? _

And then, one day in the tail end of summer, with the air in the attic room humid and close, sitting astride her legs and rubbing oil into her breasts, he thought them fuller in his hands and her nipples more responsive to his touch. Slowly, hardly daring to hope, he slid his hands down over the swell of her belly, and felt, beneath the thickened shin, beneath the ridges of scar tissue, something kick.

* * *

Over the coming months, she swelled like ripening fruit, her breasts and belly filling out while the rest of her seemed to shrink and dwindle. He resisted his hunger and eased off on the amount of meat he was taking from her, sticking to the bare minimum despite his gnawing hunger. She was so thin he wasn’t sure how much she could spare. From behind the sharp jut of her hip bones and the curve of her ribs were clearly delineated and when she turned around it was a shock to see her obscenely swollen belly, how it would list to one side, warped out of shape when the creature inside stretched out its little bones.

He had the uncomfortable feeling that it knew he was there and didn’t like him much.

Everything he had studied told him this should not have been possible. Was it demonic in origin? Or deformed dead flesh like its mother? What manner of creature might be able to thrive in a womb like hers? Dead things, as a rule, did not give birth.

In any case, thinking of it as malignant undoubtedly made certain matters easier.

Eliza’s appetite had returned. He might have taken it as a positive sign had her cravings not been so bizarre, and they grew stranger the further the pregnancy progressed: freshly unearthed soil from the garden, complete with earthworms and other scuttling creatures, which she begged him not to remove – they didn’t bother her, she said, with no thought to whether they might bother _ him. _Bowls of the stuff which she hunched over, scooping up with her fingers and devouring with relish, leaving her fingernails black with dirt while she crunched beetles between her teeth. 

And as if Magnus’s fairy tale house really had been build of gingerbread, she picked away at that too. She’d peel away splinters as long as her finger from the floorboards and chew them to a pulp, or scrape the plaster from the walls, licking the powder from her palm with as much relish as if it was sherbet.

And finally this, the heart of a freshly slaughtered hare.

It had taken him some effort to obtain, bribing a known poacher who looked like he’d be as willing to slit Edward’s throat as look at him, and it cost a bloody fortune, even though the rest of the animal would no doubt find its way into the poacher's pot, but the startled delight on her face as he delivered it, still warm and dripping, had been worth it.

She feasted on it before him while he watched, caught between revulsion and relief that she was finally eating something that could arguably be considered food. She grinned at him with teeth stained pink, and he wondered whether he could be certain that what he’d brought back was truly Eliza. As she ate, she splayed her other hand across her bump, distorted at that moment by a kicking foot. It was brutal, that child – it gave her no peace. He could picture it already, like a deformed little monkey, clinging to her with glittering jealous eyes.

As she bit into the hare’s heart, her eyes half-hooded in pleasure, Edward tried to imagine devouring her own heart in turn, the final act which would have sealed the transference of her power to him. He’d dreamed of it, of snapping her ribs one by one until he could reach inside her chest and reverently ease it out so he could feel how it pulsed in his hand. In the dream it hadn’t killed her; she’d watched, smiling wickedly as he took his first bite and her lifeblood spilled, thick and sweet and clotted, into his mouth.

She slipped the heart into her mouth whole as he knelt by the edge of the bed. His fingers played over her ankle bone, finding the long channel from which he’d peeled a strip of her flesh and within it the outline of a tendon. He pulled her gently to the edge of the bed and pushed her legs apart. Her cleft was a pallid bloodless pink. He brought his face closer, drawing in the rich earthy scent of her, rich and earthy, while she leaned back, wrapping her legs around his back. He could hear her jaw working, a soft sigh of anticipation, and he looked up past her belly, saw her lips stained dark with blood, reflecting the shine of the candlelight. She brought her blood-stained hand to his head and buried her fingers in his hair. She pushed his head down, gently at first, then her grip tightened to the point of pain as she came, hard and without warning, movement spreading out over her belly like ripples spreading out over the surface of a lake.

Uneasy, and determined to hide that unease, he rose up, tugging at his clothes while she lay back on the bed, baring her reddened teeth at him. Her tongue slipped over her lips, around her teeth, between the bloodied fingers of the hand that had held the heart, a challenge in her eyes, but she rolled onto her side obediently when he climbed onto the bed behind her, gripped her hips and pulled her back against him, grinding his erection against her backside. He kissed her throat, tasted her skin, salt and spice and charred meat, reached around to caress her breast, then down to grip her thigh and pull it upwards.

The head of his shaft pressed at her entrance but the angle was awkward and instead of sliding inside, it slipped against her. She moaned, turned her head, pressing her face into the pillow, then reached down, her hand closing around his shaft. Her grip was so tight it was almost painful, and he growled, closed his teeth on her throat in warning, but then he was inside her and the growl turned into a groan.

He let her leg drop and waited, his fingers digging into what was left of her thigh. He was already breathing hard, and from the way she was moving against him, urgent little twitches of her hips as if she couldn’t bear the way he was motionless inside her, she was drawing close again. Something about the pregnancy, the measure of life and of blood it had returned to her body. The gradual desiccation of her body seemed to have partially reversed. Her gums and the membranes of her eyes seemed pinker, and between the ridges of scar tissue when the skin split, wetness gleamed. She bled more when he harvested meat from her too, although not much and never for long; it always clotted when he put his tongue to the wound, the liquid thick and viscous, slick and sweet in his mouth.

Whatever the child was, he was quite sure by now that it was a living creature. Somehow it had managed to do what he could not and lend her some of its vitality. Dead tissue could not have managed that.

Edward pulled her face around and kissed her, tasting the hare’s blood on her mouth, letting her taste herself on his, while his hand slipped up over the swollen weight of her belly where the skin was stretched close to breaking to her breast. With the hot, coppery taste of blood in his mouth, he began to move, his movements slow and measured, but driving deeper each time. He caught her tongue between his teeth, then her lower lip, her dark eyes on his, then he released it, twisting her upper body around so he could replace his hand at her breast with his mouth, and take her nipple between his teeth. He bit down, gradually increasing the pressure until she stifled a gasp of almost-pain, her hips grinding back to meet his thrusts.

He reached down, slid his hand between her legs, spreading his first two fingers in a v-shape, her clitoris nestled in the crook of the v, his fingers around the shaft of his cock where it pounded into her. He’d meant to tease her, but he barely took two strokes before she was coming with the extra contact, throwing her body back against his, the movement so sudden and violent that her breast was ripped from his mouth. She cried out, her muscles clenching tight around him, the skin rippling over her belly as the thing inside her squirmed. A mound appeared on the upper slope, pressing out from within. Caught in the surge of his building pleasure, Edward felt a series of enraged thumps against the place where his forearm rested on his belly. In the moment before he too spent, that image of ripples on a lake returned to him, only this time he sensed something beneath the surface, something terrible and malevolent, cutting through the water like a shark.

_I see you, little man,_ it seemed to say. _I see you, and she is MINE._

Then he was coming, and all his fears were swept away in the oncoming tide.

Temporarily, anyway.

Afterwards he lay spooning into her, his face against the back of her neck, his hand resting below the mound of her belly, and he told her that he had a way out. She turned her head so he could see her profile, an eye gleaming with something he chose to think of as hope.

"There is a way to transfer a soul from one body to another," he said, choosing his words carefully, picking his way through a mire in which it would be far too easy to make a misstep. "It’s difficult, certainly, and bears some measure of risk for both parties, but there are some factors which mitigate the dangers."

"Such as?"

He hesitated. He hadn’t been expecting her to speak, let alone ask questions, and a pertinent question at that. "Well, for example, it helps if the vessel is closely related by blood." He cleared his throat awkwardly. "A direct descendent would be ideal."

"And the soul of the intended vessel? Could it survive such a transference?"

"In theory, it may. In practice..." He swallowed, licked his lips. "Well, in practice, and you realise this procedure is exceptionally rare – I know of only three occasions on which it has been performed –" (and in none of those cases had either party survived the process, but he had already decided that was something she did not need to know) "–in practice no one seems to know. The books don’t mention it." She remained silent and he gripped her hand. "It’s entirely your choice, of course, but you said yourself every moment stolen from death is a blessing. Think of it, my love. You need never go back."

"The child..."

He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it tenderly. "You cannot think of it as a living child. How can it be, when you are so..." He hesitated, trying to seem as if he was searching for the right words. She twisted around, turning towards him with a flash of the old fire in her eyes.

"You told me I was beautiful."

He smiled sadly and touched her cheek. "And you are. To me."

She stared at him, staying silent. After a few moments he rose from the bed and left, locking the door behind him, and went to fetch a mirror. It was the first time she’d seen her reflection, and it took some coaxing to make her look at herself. Finally, he had to prop the mirror up on the headboard of the bed and turn her face gently but firmly towards it. She shuddered in the moment she saw herself, a shrivelled mummy of a thing, her golden hair and shining eyes the last remnants of her old conventional beauty. She must have suspected, but perhaps not the extent of it, and she stared at her reflection, lips parting in horror, before tearing her face away.

"Now you know," he said gently. "You’ve seen what you are, Eliza. How can that thing in your belly possibly be a living child?"

"What… what do you believe it is?"

"I believe it is a monster." Emboldened by a sudden moment of inspiration, he continued. "Perhaps one of the shadows you’re so afraid of in corporeal form."

"There are a great many shadows in this house," she murmured, then glanced up at him. "Do you truly believe you can do it?"

"I brought you back didn’t I? All I needed was to buy a little time to find a way to bring you back completely, and I believe I have found it. It is, of course, your choice. But the alternative..." At his words, the candle guttered and the shadows skittered at the edges of the room. Timing so perfect he could not have planned it any better, and it seemed that for the first time luck was on his side and that perhaps he might dare to hope for more.

For Eliza, this could be a chance to live her life anew, to live a happy childhood free of Magnus’s influence. Why might he not do the same? They could grow up together, free to live their lives as they pleased, as sweethearts bound together from childhood, the way it should have been, the way it would have been were it not for Magnus fucking Blake. It would take time and careful preparations, years at least, but Edward was nothing if not patient – he’d waited all these years for Eliza after all.

Eliza’s hand tightened on his. "If it is your wish, Edward," she said numbly. She wasn’t looking at him and he sensed she was holding something back, perhaps hiding her excitement at the possibility of living again. No doubt she was ashamed. Then she turned her face towards him and her eyes caught the light. For a moment it seemed as if she was filled to the brim with liquid fire. "Of course."

** Epilogue **

It’s remarkable, Eliza thinks, as she picks a splinter of wood away from the floorboard with her fingernails, how little concern Edward has for her newfound hunger.

The sharp tip stabs into her nail bed with a brief flare of exquisite agony and she pushes harder, letting the sweet pain set her nerve endings aflame, then she leaves off and slips the splinter between her lips, coiling her tongue around it. It snaps in half, the ends pricking at her bloodless gums. Her taste buds are so much more sensitive now she is pregnant, as though her living senses are gradually seeping back, and while the wood itself has little flavour, her saliva draws out other tastes, of salt and iron. The taste of _ him _.

The child rolls in her belly, pushing out at her from within. It wants so badly to be freed. She smiles, rubbing at the stretched out skin. Strange to be inhabited again by another creature after so long: she’s forgotten how much she misses it. It brings back memories of that first summer solstice, that glorious blessed night when she first came to his attention, when she forced him to notice her.

Not just him, but all of them, those fools who thought they were leading an innocent to the slaughter. Especially her mother, that sly envious bitch. How their expressions changed when she laughed at them and called the spirits down.

Thousands of them, a multitude of voices clamouring in her head, first discordant then ringing in a harmony so clear and sweet it might have been the song of an angel. They flooded her, mind and body both, so that she was filled to the brim like an overflowing cup. Innumerable fingers brushed over every inch of her skin, some gentle and caressing, others vicious, pinching or scratching, but all wondrous, and altogether bringing her to a single moment of ecstatic clarity which streamed through her like sunlight. 

In that moment, she spread her arms, laughing at the sensations, and met his hard-eyed stare as he considered her anew, not as a victim but as an equal.

They all looked at her differently after that. Except for Edward, who fussed about her with barely enough mock-concern to hide his prurient fascination and envy.

A pity that it has to end like this. She’s rather fond of Edward, even if he is congenitally unable to stick true to a single course of action. Whatever attributes he received from his father – his _real_ father, not the spineless bleating coward who raised him – it certainly wasn’t steadfastness.

The splinter of wood has been reduced to pulp in her mouth. She sucks out the flavour: blood and semen, traces of the bodily fluids Magnus long ago used to prepare this room.

There seems so little of Magnus in Edward at first glance. At first, she couldn’t quite believe it. It was in this very room that Magnus told her, the air thick with the fragrance of burning oil and cigar smoke. She liked to hear him talk in those quiet moments when they were alone and he was in an indulgent mood, the greatest sorcerer to walk upon English soil since Roger Bolingbroke. Which is bullshit of course, but so much of being a sorcerer is the art of weaving lies into a convincing whole and that’s a talent Magnus Blake unquestionably possessed. His voice wove a spell around them both, bitter and rich as unsweetened hot chocolate as he told her of her aunt, Edward’s mother, a woman Eliza remembered as silent and cow-eyed, with the faded beauty of a pressed flower: of how she’d wept and pleaded and, finally, knelt.

Her own mother, he added, had been _far_ more obliging. Eliza said nothing to that and regarded him with hooded eyes and a cat-like smile. _I know all your secrets,_ that smile said. She was rewarded with a flicker of uncertainty before his gaze hardened into something dark and speculative.

Only now that she is pregnant is she truly convinced. Poor Edward was right about one thing, clutching several pieces of the puzzle but not quite knowing how to go about putting them together: this baby is an impossibility. She is a dead thing walking, caught between the worlds of the living and the dead, and only a creature similarly caught could have impregnated her. Edward is entirely alive. For the moment, anyway.

The baby is a gift, but it is also proof that Magnus was right. From time to time she's glimpsed him peering out through the eyes of his bastard son, always in the witching hour, and she wonders if Edward ever suspected in those moments that his body was not entirely his own.

Poor sweet Edward. But after all, he had promised to help her if he could, and this is a great honour and one he little deserves. His body is weak, his magical ability stunted, and what little he has managed to leach away from her is already creeping back, stronger than ever. He is an unworthy vessel for the great Magnus Blake.

But then that too has its advantages. Having Magnus weak and at her mercy: she rather likes the thought of that.

It won’t be long now.

At the edge of the room, the spirits hidden in the shadows stir. The elongated shadow of a man unfolds, the head a grotesque silhouette of a goat’s head, the spiralling horns so long they scrape against the ceiling.

Eliza smiles and stretches out her arms as the spirit of Magnus Blake, whose house this is and will always be, steps forward. The precious child in her belly squirms in joyful recognition of its beloved father and she laughs, stroking her belly fondly.

A 'monster', indeed.


End file.
